An Ingeniously Designed Speaker That Creates Crowdsourced Playlists

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Caption: Chune is a new social music concept designed for parties, offices, and other shared use settings. Photo: Chune

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Caption: Users who have the Chune app installed on their phone can tap a custom speaker, and through the magic of NFC their playlists and musical tastes are transferred to it, creating a crowdsourced mixtape. Photo: Chune

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Caption: Instead of the latest in OLED or curved screen technology, Chune uses a matrix of LEDs, reminiscent of a Lite-Brite, to create animations when you've successfully entered your preferences. Photo: Chune

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Caption: Physical controls are arranged in a tic-tac-toe grid and limited to a button that skips songs and knobs to control volume and "vibe." Photo: Chune

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Caption: "We wanted Chune to be playful," says industrial design Victor Johansson. "I guess you could say it's for the people who favor the iPhone C instead of the S." Photo: Chune

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Music is inherently social, but almost all of the popular music services that exist today are optimized for individual listeners. Chune is a new social music concept designed for parties, offices, and other shared use settings. Users who have the Chune app installed on their phone can tap a custom speaker, and through the magic of NFC, their playlists and musical tastes are transferred to it, creating a crowdsourced mixtape.

Chune’s user interface is decidedly old-school and almost toy-like. Instead of the latest in OLED or curved screen technology, Chune uses a matrix of LEDs—reminiscent of a Lite-Brite—to create animations when preferences are successfully entered. Physical controls are arranged in a tic-tac-toe grid and limited to a button that skips songs and knobs to control volume and “vibe.”

The vibe knob is a clever solution to a thorny social problem. Instead of arguing about exactly which song or artist should be playing, a group can decide on the general level of intensity and leave the final decisions to Chune.

The vibe knob is a clever solution to a thorny social problem.

Chune was the result of an internship offered by an English design firm called Clearleft who counts Amnesty International, Mozilla, and UNICEF UK as clients. Instead of assigning their interns monotonous drudge work, they offered an open-ended design project: “Turn a current active digital behavior in to a passive one.” Put another way, “make sure the office has a killer sound system before you leave for school.”

The project team consisted of Kilian Bochnig, a multimedia designer; Zassa Kavuma, a creative technologist; and Victor Johansson, an industrial designer. They spent a month researching the market, technologies, and ways to apply the technology ultimately generating the concept behind Chune.

“It’s inspired more from old-school amplifiers, synthesizers and DJ mixers than from the current non-tactile interface paradigm of the moment,” says Johansson.

The idea mixes smart playlist ideas from Spotify and Pandora with the hardware forms of Sonos and Jawbone. Popular music services give users ways to share, either by tweeting about a song or sharing a playlist, but Chune tries something a little different. By forcing physical interactions, the speaker creates a “musical punchbowl” that encourages people to interact with each other as much as the machine.

“The LED-Matrix is merely a solution to a interaction-design issue we had,” says Johansson. “Since any audio feedback would be annoying, imaging 20 people tapping in within an hour, visual feedback became our choice.”

Chune brings novel user interface concepts to the product category, but the industrial design is also an interesting departure from the norm. Music accessory makers have followed Apple’s lead over the last decade focusing on refined forms and high-end materials. Designers have created accessories made from aircraft-grade aluminum, Merino wool, and even concrete, yet Chune feels like a throwback to the era where Sony’s swooping curves and brightly colored plastic gear were popular.

Might these designers be the canary in the coal mine that heralds the return of colorful plastics as a viable material for designer products? “We wanted Chune to be playful,” says Johansson. “I guess you could say it’s for the people who favor the iPhone C instead of the S.”

The one flaw in the system’s design is that anyone who wants to share needs to download yet another music app and train it by manually selecting artists, genres, and attributes that they like. Ultimately, the team would like to be able to passively collect a lot of that data, perhaps through a music service’s API.

The service, app, and speaker unit are far from being available on the App Store. Chune currently exists only as a demo made from a Raspberry Pi, laser-cut MDF, and a ton of elbow grease, but don’t be surprised to see other companies carry the tune.